Speed road to Photoshop

[No.1]

Photoshop is one amazing program with an unrivaled power and incredible depth. In this new sticky topic you will going to learn some killing Photoshop technique and basic goal is to learn how to manipulate with your images. Be sure that if you going to study of the step by step which will be presented here that you will became more creative user and this will be achived with no extra effort. Technique will be presented for PC users but difference for the Mac users is in the name of short cut's.

Are yoy ready?!?

[mfg495]

Looking forward to this 

[santynus]

yep, ready 

[mfg495]

yep, ready 

On your marks.........

Get set............

GO   

[No.1]

Most important when you instal Photoshop is to make clear determination how this program have to work.  First go to the Edit- Preferences- General.

Under the General keep all what you see but you can make some changes in the History States. By the default  it is 20 states but if you want to keep memory you should reduce this number. But also if you have no problem  with memory you can increase this number on eg. 30 states. This present how many back step Photoshop  remember and this will use in the History panel later.

Next is File handling and leave it as it is.
Display and Cursors leave as it is.
Transparency & Gamut also leave as it is.
Units and Rulers- I put the Rulers on milimeters [ mm] and type in points.  I use metric measurement but  there is also inches. No need to take other measurements for Type [this is the size of text] as well all use  measure in points. Also no need to make any change on Print Resolution and Screen Resolution.
Next step is Guides, Grid & Slices and also leave as it is.
Plug-Ins & Scratch Disks is very important and go down on the area for the scratch disc. This determinate  where the Photoshop should put additional data and store memory during the work. You have present as  much disc as much you have it on hard disc. As well I have it four I see there four disc. Never- never- never put  the first scratch on disc "C" even if you have there most space. First disc have to be the one with most space  and then the rest with smaller and smaller space and the last one is the "C".

Next is the Memory & Image Cashe. Lets be clear- don't instal Photoshop CS2 if you have no at least 1 GB of  RAM!!! Some under the 250 MB is used by the system and rest can be used by Photoshop. Photoshop find its  brutal power in the RAM memory, you can have most expencive graphic card in the world it's worth nothing if  you have no RAM. Best chice is the Dual Chanell RAM of some 2 GB... my dream Well I have set there 85% of  available RAM for Photoshop and I work smooth.

Type leave as it is.

And after this finished you can start with Photoshop actions...

[No.1]

Photoshop offer to you all on your finger tips and much of the action can be taken from the keyboard. As much as you learn shortcuts, that much you will make faster your work.

Here it is first tip- how to find out how much is our image large. You can go to Image- Image size but there is short way- hold Ctrl-Alt and press I and you will see dialog as attached here. You can see there size in pixels, document print size as well document resolution. If you want to see canvas size you just hold Ctrl-Alt and press C.

[No.1]

Here it is simple way how to put two images side by side when you work. Go to Windows-Arrange and choose Tile Verticaly.

[No.1]

Sometimes happen that we lost our cursor tool somewhere on the image are. Reason is sometimes that the color is identical to the color of the tool. Simple method to find it is to press space and our cursor will convert into the hand and show it position. It is also good shortcut for the movin over large image are- instead to go to tool box you just press space, hold it down and move image all over the screen.

[No.1]

There is always some hiden way to get more from your action. Here it is some way to precise determine crop

tool. When you take Crop tool, shortcut C from keyboard, you have in command bar two empty field and you

can there writte sizes. Then you roght click in the field and menu will apear where you will choose measure

for crop. Easy and fast

[No.1]

We normally use the Lasso tool (L) for drawing freeform selections, but sometimes you'll find that while  drawing your selection you'll need to draw a perfectly straight segment. You can do just that by holding the   Alt key, releasing the mouse button, and continuing to draw your selection. You'll notice that your cursor  changes to the Polygonal Lasso tool. When you've dragged the straight selection where you want, click-and- hold the mouse button (to add a point), release the Alt key, and you'll be back to the regular Lasso tool  again. Drag the mouse to continue drawing your selection.

[divanov]

Allow me to participate in this small school of Photoshop ? Well, there is one very usefull command (in my humble opinion) when working with selections - Save selection in Select menu. When you make selection, with this command you can save it and use it every time you need it, no matter in what layer you are currently working. After two weeks of work on profile or something else you may find some details unsatisfying. Will you try to select same detail again? No, just Load selection from Select menu and - voila, there it is. It also saves size of the file since adding many layers increase it very fast and then working in Photoshop becomes waiting for Photoshop. Try and experiment - you'll see.

[No.1]

Web is one of the most important comunication media today and as many other it use graphic. But not much of  webmaster take attention on the preparation of the graphic for web. Other problem which appear is great  number of "harvesters" who just take all of this images for their own purpose and then publish it with no  permission. To thing become worse one company from UK had released last year plug-in which allow to convert  web image into the printing quality image... the age of piracy is here.

What we can do- at least to make a big problem with any who would like to take our graphic. Other benefit  that with the same physical size in pixels our image will be much smaller in KB and with no significant loose in  apearance make our site work much smooth and faster. In the begining of this site my images was from 90KB  up to 150 and today with the same sizein pixels they are much smaller and never go over 40 KB. And where is  the trick? No trick- Photoshop CS2

First you have to do is to open image in CS2 and make basic adjuctment for the web. Experience show that  there is no need to place image wider then 800 pixels and for me best fit is 640 pixels. If you really want to  put "harvester" on problem then reduce it on 300 pixels. Then you do following think- hold Shift-Ctrl-Alt and  then press S. You will have then open new window for the setings of your image for web.

First you have to do is to press on tab on the upper line and recomended is 4 Up. This will split your image in  four small windows and each will show you your image in different size and how it look like. Note that one  image, right upper corner, is blue outlined. This image I have press as option for save on web. Under the image  you see size and format- it is JPEG and 20.57KB and this is reduction from standard reduced image which had  52.8KB before.

On the strboard side you will see control panel. Watch at the red indicated tabs. First is set on JPEG and this  is best for format for color profiles and images. Almost 100% of my graphic is set on this format. Under this is  the Level of the compression and I choose Medium. There is also optiom Low but I don't use it as well it  destort image more then I like to be.

Then you press button Save and then new window will open and this will allow you to choose where you to  save this image. Better save it in separate folder then the original but if you choose the same folder then  original will be overwritten [not if you change name ]. When you save this you can close your image. Now  panel will apeear which will ask you if you want to save changes on the image. Choose No and close file.

Hope that this will be of great help to you

[mfg495]

great infomation No.1, I have used this on some of my images on my site. 

[mfg495]

Are you in the future going to do about clipping paths.   

[No.1]

Are you in the future going to do about clipping paths.

Thgis are used for the sending of images on the proffesional machine in the print preparation. This make problems with some type ofmachine but I think on you and will ask divanov who is better expert in print preparation to make detaled answer to you